JINDRA BARTOVA
Janacek Academy of Performing Arts, Brno, Czech Republic
Research interests: 20th-century Czech music, music criticism

Jindra Bartova is Professor of music and Chair of the Music History Department at the Janacek Academy of Performing Arts in Brno. Author of two monographs on the twentieth-century Czech composers Jan Kapr and Miloslav Istvan, Professor Bartova has also published a series of articles on contemporary Czech composers and on the history and general problems of music criticism in Czech musicological journals and magazines Hudebni veda, Opus Musicum, and Hudebni rozhledy. In addition, she has authored numerous entries in the Dictionary of Contemporary Czech Composers and in Komponisten der Gegenwart. In 2007, Professor Bartova was instrumental to the success of the world premiere of Kapralova's symphonic ballad-cantata Ilena, op. 15. A project of the Janacek Academy of Performing Arts, the initiative was initiated and financially assisted by the Kapralova Society.

Michael Beckerman is Professor of music and Chair of the Music Department at New York University. He has written and edited several books on Czech composers, including: Dvorak and His World (Princeton University Press, 1993), Janacek as Theorist (Pendragon Press, 1994), New Worlds of Dvorak (Norton, 2003), Janacek and His World (Princeton, 2003), Martinu’s Mysterious Accident (Pendragon, 2007), and Classical Music: Contemporary Perspectives and Challenges (ed. with Paul Boghossian, Open Book Publishers, 2021). Prof. Beckerman has received the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award several times for his work on Dvorak. He is also a recipient of the Janacek Medal from the Czech Ministry of Culture, and a laureate of the Czech Music Council.

Timothy Cheek is Professor of Voice at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He joined the faculty of its School of Music in 1994, following his studies at Oberlin, the University of Texas at Austin, and Michigan. He served opera internships at the Teatro Comunale in Florence, Italy, and at the National Theatre in Prague, and his performances as a collaborative pianist have taken him to twelve countries. Timothy Cheek has held several grants, including an Olivetti Foundation grant to perform in Italy, a Fulbright award, and an IREX grant to conduct research in the Czech Republic which led to his book Singing in Czech: A Guide to Czech Lyric Diction and Vocal Repertoire (Scarecrow Press, 2011), now in its second, revised edition (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). Professor Cheek is an ardent promoter of Kapralova's music. In 2003, he was instrumental in the premiere recording of Kapralova's art songs by Supraphon. In 2005 he edited a complete, critical edition of the songs for the Prague-based independent publisher Amos Editio. Both projects were financially assisted by the Kapralova Society.

Erik Entwistle holds a PhD. in musicology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was on the faculty of the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, MA, and also taught for six years at Harvard University. Dr. Entwistle has devoted much of his performing and scholarly career to the music of Czech composers. His two recordings of solo piano and chamber music by Martinu have been released by Summit Records. His writings on Martinu, Weinberger, and Janacek have been featured in The New York Times, Opera Quarterly, and European Piano Teachers’ Association Journal, and he also contributed an essay to Martinu’s Mysterious Accident, a collection of essays edited by Michael Beckerman. Erik Entwistle is a co-editor (with Karla Hartl) of The Kapralova Companion, a collective monograph and first book in English language devoted to Vitezslava Kapralova. The book was published in 2011 by Lexington Books (Rowman & Littlefield).

Eugene Gates holds a B.A. in music (Acadia University), an M.A. in music criticism (Mc Master University), and an Ed.D. in aesthetics of music (University of Toronto). He is a retired faculty member of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, where he taught piano, organ, music history and music appreciation. Until recently, he was also organist and choirmaster of St. Barnabas Anglican Church in Toronto and was active as an accompanist, adjudicator, examiner, and clinician. His doctoral dissertation was on nineteenth-century women composers, and his articles on women composers and other musical subjects have appeared in the Journal of Aesthetic Education, Canadian Music Educator, Journal of the American Liszt Society, Music Educators Journal, Tempo, VivaVoce, Czech Music, University of Toronto Quarterly, and Kapralova Society Journal, which he co-edits with Karla Hartl. Dr. Gates also sits on the board of directors of the Kapralova Society.

Judith Mabary is Associate Professor of Musicology, Director of Graduate Studies, and Coordinator, Music History and Ethnomusicology at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Music. She received her doctoral degree in musicology from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Her dissertation was on Redefining Melodrama: The Czech Response to Music and Word, researched with the help of an IREX grant. The results of her research have appeared in publications by Cambridge University Press, Duke University Press, Pendragon Press, Routledge Press, Chronos Verlag (Zürich), and Lexington Books. Her latest book on Czech melodrama, Contextualizing Melodrama in the Czech Lands: In Concert and on Stage, was published in 2020. Dr. Mabary has served in various capacities for professional societies, including as a member of the advisory board for the Kapralova Society and as chair of the Board of Directors at the Budds Center for American Music, located at the University of Missouri, Columbia.

Cuban-born, American-raised Odaline de la Martinez pursues a busy international career performing a great variety of repertoire ranging from Mozart symphonies to the latest of contemporary music. Brought up and educated in the USA, she settled in London and studied at the Royal Academy of Music. Later she became founder and music director of the contemporary ensemble Lontano, of the London Chamber Symphony and, in 1990, the European Women's Orchestra. In 1992 she founded her own record label, LORELT, which concentrates on areas neglected by many recording companies, including women's music. Her 1994 performance of Ethel Smyth's opera The Wreckers, recorded for Conifer Classics, remains unsurpassed. In 2016, she also recorded (for Retrospect Opera Records) Ethel Smyth's comic opera The Boatswein's Mate. Martines is also known as a broadcaster for BBC Radio and Television.

Jan Smaczny is Hamilton Harty Professor of music and Emeritus Professor of musicology and composition at the Queen's University School of Arts. He has written a large range of articles on many aspects of Czech music. Among his publications is a catalogue of repertoire for the Prague Provisional Theatre (1994), a guide to the Czech Symphony (Oxford Press, 1995), articles on the operas of Dvorak and Martinu (for the New Grove Dictionary of Opera), a book on Dvorak's cello concerto (Cambridge Press, 1999) and a study of the life and music of Dvorak (Oxford, 2000). Professor Smaczny was educated at the University of Oxford and the Charles University, Prague. A frequent broadcaster on BBC Radios 3 and 4, he regularly writes reviews for the BBC Music Magazine, Opera Magazine and The Independent.